


Divertere

by fictorium



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Divorce, F/F, Parent-Child Relationship, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 03:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Divorced Lesbian Mommies AU at Swan Queen Week.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"></div>
            </blockquote>





	Divertere

**Author's Note:**

> Oodles of thanks to writetherest and paradoxalpoised for their beta work.

and some days I don't miss my family.  
and some days I do.  
and some days I think I'd feel better if I tried harder.  
most days I know it's not true.

 

**The Mountain Goats** , _Wild Sage_

  


Regina delivers the papers herself, on a windy morning in February. The gusts are strong enough to disturb even her immaculate hair. Emma answers the door in pajamas that don’t match, inviting Regina into a house that isn’t home-- that hasn’t been anything close to home since the day three years ago when Emma blurted _marry me_ as they tried to catch their breath in the mess of sheets sometime after midnight.

 

“If you want to have your attorney--”

 

“It’s fine,” Emma shakes her head, rooting through the kitchen drawer for a pen that actually has ink in it. Regina produces one from her purse, a dull silver casing on a pen that’s probably worth more than Emma’s car. A rollerball, and the way Regina watches for a reaction means it’s deliberate that she didn’t bring one of the fountain pens she prefers, like the one her name is already signed in. The flourishes are as familiar to Emma as her own reflection, and she can see the contradictions of Regina as always, in the bold curves of the R and stark lines that mark the double l.

 

“Still, if you wanted to wait, I would understand,” Regina continues in her politician’s voice, like Emma is just another citizen complaining about parking fines or when the trash gets collected. “Henry suggested that you were having a bad week.”

 

“Henry suggests a lot of things,” Emma replies, and she skims the last page like she’s reading it, like she could understand the impenetrable words and the pretentious bits of Latin even if her eyes weren’t full of prickling tears. “It’s better to just be done, right?”

 

“That’s what we agreed,” Regina says, and still she’s watching. Emma’s barely seen her in the last two months, the endless sixty days since the first complaint was served seem now to have gone past in the time it takes Emma to scrawl a jagged approximation of her name on the thick, ivory paper.

 

“So, we’re done,” Emma sighs. “I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but…”

 

“I’d only complain that you make it too strong,” Regina supplies.

 

All those years, erased in little more than a minute. Sixty days of waiting, of thinking up six hundred ways to say _let’s not do this_ or _I didn’t mean the things I said_ and last, but so very much least, _I can’t sleep without you beside me_.

 

“And the magic thing that the Blue Fairy did… we’re not, you know?” Emma doesn’t know how to ask the question.

 

“Magically, we’re completely separate once more, yes. I’ll see myself out,” Regina says, stuffing the papers back in their envelope without looking. Looking makes it real, and final, and if there’s one person worse-equipped than Emma to deal with endings and leaving and it hurts slightly less to not say goodbye, then it’s Regina Mills. It’s one more thing to not call her out on, not to accuse her of in a bid to start one last fight; as Regina told her on the day they filed, they’re too good at fighting and too bad at everything else.

 

“Okay,” Emma whispers, because frankly, it’s anything but.

 

***

 

Henry does everything he can think of to make her stay, but Emma’s seen it all before, up to and including a staggeringly realistic attempt at faking chicken pox.

 

“She might change her mind if you give it until the fall,” he suggests on the last day, voice dropped and with a couple of inches on Emma as he stands beside the recently revamped Bug, its new engine ticking over much quieter than the original one ever did. “When I’m off at college, she’ll be lonely and--”

 

“Not interested in being a placeholder, kid.”

 

“You’re--”

 

“Listen, I’ll be fine in Portland. Gotta go where they need someone in the Sheriff’s department. And when you go off to college in September, we’ll get to hang out whenever you want. If you don’t ditch me for the other History nerds.”

 

“I won’t ditch you,” Henry promises, and it means more than Emma has the words to tell him. She thumps his bicep with a clumsy fist instead, a substitute since he got too tall for her to ruffle his hair.

 

“Look after her.”

 

Emma’s throat is tight around the words, just saying it feels like swallowing a hundred tiny razors. They both ignore it as best they can.

 

“I always do,” Henry reminds her.

 

***

 

It’s like learning how to read and write all over again, living on her own. Anyone who ever let her crash on a sofa those years in Tallahassee would be mystified at the thought of Emma ever missing cohabitation, but there’s nothing lonelier than one type of cereal in the kitchen cupboard, especially when she buys Henry’s favorite instead of her own, muscle memory unchanged by the new grocery store in a new town.

 

A week after she gives Henry her new numbers--fresh starts mean new everything, as far as the cash will stretch for someone who refused a red cent in alimony--there’s a call at just a little after one in the morning that jolts Emma from the lightest of sleeps.

 

“Regina?” She answers, although she can’t see the display through sleep-clouded eyes and no contacts. Emma knows because her stomach flips before she even hears a breath on the other end of the line.

 

“Are you okay?” Regina whispers, and it doesn’t take clairvoyance to know that she’s been crying. And drinking.

 

“Well… my mattress is kinda lumpy,” Emma sighs. “And I bought the wrong cereal. How about you?”

 

“M’fine,” Regina lies. “Henry’s going to call when he gets up. He got his acceptance letters today. All three said yes.”

 

“And he didn’t call tonight?”

 

“He got the emails today but between soccer and mooning around over Paige, he only got home ten minutes ago and told me. Act surprised, okay? But not too surprised, Emma.”

 

“Hey, someone with my genetic material got into some pretty swanky schools,” Emma counters. “I think some surprise is healthy, at least.”

 

“That’s true,” Regina muses in reply. “I have met your father, after all. I’m sure they’d send their love, if they ever spoke to me.”

 

“Did you need something in particular, or…”

 

“I thought…” Regina’s voice fades away to nothing, and she sniffs, just a little indelicately. “Before you came to Storybrooke, I always thought I’d hear this news alone. When the day came. I should have remembered that. I suppose I got lazy, with having you around. I assumed…”

 

“That we’d hear it together,” Emma sighs in response, scrubbing a hand over her face in silent shame. “Yeah, me too.”

 

“Anyway. It’s late.”

 

“I don’t mind.”

 

“You’re really okay?”

 

“I’m a big girl, Regina,” Emma huffs. “Wait--”

 

But there’s just a click and then silence from the cool plastic pressed against her cheek. Emma punches her pillow in frustration, frowning at the way the cheap pillowcases are already rough to the touch.  She turns the pillow over, enjoying the cool side for a moment, before rolling over to try and get some sleep before the morning shift.

 

***

 

“Regina actually came up to us in the diner last week,” Mary Margaret says, rearranging Emma’s kitchen cupboards while Henry roots around in the fridge. “She said it was about nuisance complaints about your little brother crying, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence she came right over after your father said your name.”

 

“It probably was,” Emma replies from where she’s taken refuge on the sofa. “Kid, throw me a beer, could you?”

 

“Only if I can have one,” he sasses, and Emma gives him her most withering stare in response. “Fine, I’ll stick to orange juice that expired two weeks ago.”

 

“We’ll get shakes when we go out,” Emma promises. “Thanks for helping with the rest of my stuff, Henry. You must have cooler things to do with your weekend.”

 

“I don’t get to see you much,” Henry says with a shrug, stepping in to help his grandmother before she tips an entire bag of rice all over her head. He places it on a higher shelf easily, turning back to his mother and handing over an opened beer. “Mom said you can still take anything else you want. Just let her know.”

 

“I got everything I need,” Emma insists, surveying her newly-returned Playstation and a few extra bags of clothes that came down in her parents’ new SUV. “Mom, quit fussing so we can go get food.”

 

“We are taking you grocery shopping before we go home,” David says from her apartment’s tiny balcony. He’s showing the town to Lance, who’s chattering that way kids do, making Emma just a little irritated by the little brother she just can’t seem to connect to. “You’re going to get scurvy, Emma.”

 

“I made it this far without dying of malnutrition,” Emma points out.

 

“That’s only because Regina’s been feeding you real food for the past few years,” David starts, but it tapers off into an embarrassed silence at Emma’s glare. She doesn’t mean to be this unpredictable around them, to have one mention be fine but another to be irritating. They can’t know how much she thinks about her wife, how she can’t bear to add the ‘ex-’ except when absolutely forced to.

 

“Let’s get out of here,” Emma suggests. “It’s too nice to be cooped up indoors.”

 

***

 

Henry is withdrawn over lunch, and stays in the car while Emma is dragged around the nearest food market by her fussing parents. It’s only when they get back to the apartment in the evening, just after sunset, that Emma realizes she hasn’t heard her son speak in hours.

 

“What gives?” She asks, as they wrestle grocery bags onto the kitchen counters. “And tell the truth, or you’re putting all this crap away yourself.” Emma’s cupboards are a mix of bare shelves and cluttered chaos. There’s no system here, no logical storage that reminds her the canned goods go next to the baking supplies which are separate again from the sauces.

 

“It’s nothing,” Henry fibs, but his bottom lip is trembling, and Emma knows the real story is coming if she just waits it out. “It’s… Mom.”

 

“Is something wrong with her?” Emma flies into an instant panic, wondering if the ever stoic Regina has some terrible ordeal to go through without anyone but their son to confide in. The thought alone breaks Emma’s heart all over again.

 

“She’s trying to pretend like she’s happy about me going to college. She even suggested moving to Connecticut to be a ‘little bit closer’. Can you imagine ever leaving that house? Or Storybrooke, come to that?”

 

“I can’t,” Emma admits. That’s the town that Regina’s magic built, after all. “But why does that upset you?”

 

“Because you shouldn’t be here!” Henry growls, slamming a fist into the nearest cupboard door barely wincing although the impact is hard. “You should be in our house, and you should be doing those stupid jokes that cheer Mom up when she retreats into a to-do list like this. And we should _all_ have gone out to lunch today to celebrate Yale, but she’s at home alone because I had to play the asshole last year.”

 

“It wasn’t your fault.”

 

“It wasn’t just yours, either.”

 

“It was,” Emma tells him, and she’s still not the greatest at this hugging and comforting thing, but she knows on a gut level that it’s time to pull the kid close. “I did the worst thing anyone could do to your mom.”

 

“You didn’t cheat on her, did you? I always thought maybe you didn’t tell me because...well, gross.”

 

“I betrayed her in worse ways,” Emma mutters. “But I can’t talk about this tonight. I’m sorry.”

 

“Maybe next time,” Henry suggests, shrugging her hug off, his usual chipper smile back in place. “But maybe you should try beating yourself up less and fixing it more?”

 

“You think you know it all, don’t you?”

 

“Come on, Emma. Knowing more than you do about something isn’t exactly hard.”

 

Emma laughs at the truth of it, sobering a moment later at how utterly Regina the statement is. She swats the kid as he darts across the room out of her reach, just to let him know that the pain of recognition didn’t knock her down this time.

 

***

 

“Get up,” Emma commands, throwing the curtains in her barely-decorated spare room open, momentarily blinding them both. Henry throws out some curse words that Emma would be pretty infuriated by if she hadn’t been the one to teach them to him.

 

“You’re a sadist,” Henry groans as he slides from bed to floor, seemingly made of jello. “Is that dawn or is the moon just really close?”

 

“It’s 7am, and we have a drive ahead of us.”

 

“But I’m going back with Gramps and--”

 

“Plans. Changed.”

 

“I’m going to pee. Then you’re going to tell me why you look like you have a body in the trunk all of a sudden. No, wait. Wrong mother.”

 

Shuffling off to the bathroom in his pajama bottoms (and really, how does Emma have a kid who thinks he’s grown up enough to sleep without a shirt, and have honest-to-God muscles, when to her, he’ll always be the person she thinks of when she sees a tiny onesie with dinosaurs on it?)

 

“Right,” Henry announces, joining her in the kitchen where Emma has decided to sweeten the deal with toast and coffee. “What the hell?”

 

“I’m taking you back. Without the grandparents. And I’m going to take your advice.”

 

“From last night? Listen, that was more ‘hindsight is 20/20’, you know? Not a battle plan.”

 

“Doesn’t mean I can’t use it,” Emma says, pouring cream into her coffee and stirring it with manic energy until some spills over the brim of the mug. Henry calms her by laying his hand on her wrist for a moment.

 

“If you think you can steal a lawnmower and ride up to the house with a boombox, I have to beg you to reconsider.”

 

“Someone’s been boning up on chick flicks before college,” Emma replies with a smirk. “You’re gonna get them talking about Molly Ringwald and Winona Ryder and then make your move, you little pig.”

 

“Hey, I learned from the best,” Henry snorts. “And you’re the one who picked all those John Hughes movies for movie night. Blame yourself.”

 

“I didn’t want to talk last night, but I owe you an explanation,” Emma says, sitting at the wobbly kitchen table opposite her son. “You probably don’t remember a lot because of the hospital, and then healing your magical injuries on top of the regular kind knocked out your memories, we’re pretty sure.”

 

“But I’m fine!” Henry protests. “Whatever you and Mom fought about when you were stressed, that’s all over now.”

 

“It wasn’t just an argument, Henry,” Emma admits. “I went behind her back, to the fairies. And I told your grandparents, and Whale, and a few other people some things that your mom told me in confidence. I gave away her secrets, in case it was a way to help you. In the end, it had nothing to do with making you better. And your mom was just left with my betrayal.”

 

“You told her secrets?” Henry’s voice rises along with his eyebrows. “Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t it have been quicker to kidnap me and burn the house down? Might have hurt her less.”

 

“Don’t start. I’ve already heard every variation. Including the ‘what can I expect from someone of your bloodline’ crap, before you ask. Your mom might be smart as a whip, but she’s predictable, too.”

 

“All this because I messed up by using magic,” Henry groans. “If I could go back and tell you guys on that first day that the sparks came off my fingers…”

 

“We know that. But part of being the kid means you’re allowed to make mistakes like that. As long as you learn from them.”

 

“Maybe you need to learn from them, too.”

 

“Ready to roll?”

 

“Lead the way,” Henry sighs. “Don’t forget cash for a room at Granny’s when Mom throws you out on your butt again.”

 

“There’s my little optimist,” Emma snarks in reply. “Truest believer? My ass.”

 

***

 

It’s not a long drive, but it’s just long enough for Emma to realize she has no plan, and very little hope. Henry, for his part, stays quiet, munching on the drive-thru breakfast she’s bribing him with. He’ll go straight to his room once they get to the house, leaving Emma alone with Regina. God, let the words have started to come by then.

 

They enter through the kitchen, because Henry has his key, and it’s weird to make the kid knock on the front door of his own home. He stops only to raid the fridge for juice before bolting upstairs like he promised. Since it’s a Sunday morning, they both know where Regina will be, but Emma lingers in the hallway and holds her breath for a minute at a time rather than rap her knuckles on the door of the home office.

 

Emma knocks softly, enough that she shouldn’t be heard over the classic rock Regina plays as she pays her bills and balances her checkbook, signing the myriad forms that have flowed thick and fast from the school and the state and the world, now that Storybrooke has more or less officially joined it. For all her resolve to return, to immerse herself in the clean, matching socks and delicious leftovers in the fridge that come with domesticity, there are still some things that Emma knows she doesn’t miss.

 

The music isn’t playing, Emma notices after a moment, and so her knock should have been heard. She opens the door carefully, but there’s no sign of Regina. Her weekend routines are sacrosanct, and even Emma had learned after a while not to divert her with sex or impromptu breakfast plans, though they still managed plenty of both outside Regina’s allocated work time.

 

Puzzled, Emma steps back out into the foyer and catches the door of the sitting room lying slightly open. That room is rarely used, a home for a fancy piano and less comfortable chairs. Most importantly it’s a space where Regina doesn’t tolerate spills, where dropped crackers or spilled wine make the vein in her forehead pulse, no matter how tight a grip she keeps on her anger these days.

 

The high-backed sofa that Emma hates probably the most of anything in the house, with its slippery silk surface and completely uncomfortable excuse for a cushion, is where she finds Regina. Curled up in her usual reading position, hardback on her lap and glasses slipped all the way to the end of her nose, she’s lost in a restless sleep until Emma weighs the odds and lays a gentle hand on Regina’s shoulder.

 

“Hey,” Emma breathes, not in any hurry to disturb the peace. “It’s just me.”

 

“You came home,” Regina murmurs. “Oh.” The realization wakes her the rest of the way, and Emma retreats to the chair opposite as Regina rights herself, wiping sleep from her eyes and hanging her hastily-removed glasses from the ‘v’ of her blouse. “Is Henry--”

 

“Fine,” Emma assures, holding her hands up to apologize for the interruption. “The road trip was my idea.”

 

“You haven’t been here since… coffee. I need some coffee,” Regina confesses. “Can we take this to the kitchen?”

 

“It’s your house,” Emma replies with a shrug. “I can make it, if you want to freshen up or whatever.”

 

“Why are you here?” Regina demands, pausing in the doorway. “I just…”

 

“Need to know exactly how on the defensive you need to be?” Emma suggests. “Not at all. I come in peace, I swear.”

 

“Then make the coffee. With at least one scoop less than whatever your instinct tells you to add, please?”

 

Emma salutes, and it’s only slightly mocking. Regina darts towards the stairs, and Emma heads across the foyer to the once familiar comfort of the kitchen.

 

***

 

“Not bad,” Regina says after her first sip, though how she can taste much beyond her metric fuckton of cream and sugar, Emma will never be quite sure. A disciplinarian with their son, the picture of fiscal prudence as Mayor, but in the kitchen and the bedroom, Regina is nothing but indulgent, and frankly outright decadent most of the time. “You’re not having any?”

 

“I’m wired enough,” Emma admits. “Listen, maybe it’s the distance, or time heals or some bullshit… I can’t help wondering if I made a mistake.”

 

“In getting married?”

 

“No, in getting divorced. I realize now that maybe I didn’t fight hard enough. I was so ready to lose you at some point that I just folded. I know, right? First sign of trouble and Emma runs away. You could set your watch by me.”

 

“You say that like I had no choice in the matter. I’m the one who served you with divorce papers,” Regina places her mug back on the counter, hands trembling slightly. “But the time to raise these concerns was before you signed them.”

 

“You always said I had a slow learning curve.” Emma knows this isn’t really the time for bad jokes, but she doesn’t know what else to do. They never did have this fight--this discussion, she should call it-- in full, too preoccupied by nursing their son back to health while the divide between them widened and festered. “I thought I was helping Henry, and while I want not to have hurt you, I also can’t regret doing everything I had to help him.”

 

“Betraying me to those fairies, to your parents… how did that help him? I’m the one who healed him. I’m the one who almost died draining the magic from his body.”

 

“What did the betrayal cost you in the end? Did the fairies come after you? Did David throw you in prison? No. So maybe you could get off my ass about--”

 

“That has to be a new record for the yelling,” Henry announces from the hall. “You two need to talk, and you should have done it a long time ago. Stubborn idiots.”

 

“Henry--” Emma warns, but Regina is off and running.

 

“Whatever you think of our choices, Henry, under my roof you’ll still show us respect. Emma will be leaving in a moment, so you can wait here to say goodbye.”

 

“Like hell,” Emma grunts. “I psyched myself up to have this conversation, so we’re damn well having it.”

 

“Don’t.” Regina is the one issuing the warning this time, and Emma grits her teeth, trying to remember the steps of this dance: the one where she doesn’t corner Regina and force her into things like too many people have before. Emma can do that. Emma learned, somewhere along the way, how to be with someone. No, not someone. Regina. She learned Regina the way she might have learned piano, had anyone ever paid for lessons as a kid. How to press just hard enough, how to keep the touch light and when to be fast and furiously in motion, and hardest of all, knowing when to pause and let everything just fade out.

 

“I’ll be upstairs,” Henry sighs. “Come see me before you go, Ma.”

 

He hasn’t called her that in a while, and Emma chokes at the sound of it.

 

“Why are you really here?” Regina asks again, eyes closed as she leans back against the counter, arms folded across over chest, protecting her heart whether she means to or not.

 

“I’ve been trying to come up with an answer since I got in the car,” Emma tells her. “And so far all I have is that… I’m tired of missing you. I’m tired of being so angry at myself for letting it all get this fucked up.”

 

“And your solution?”

 

“Well, if there was an obvious solution, we’d have done it by now.”

 

“Perhaps you should start by not trying to avoid the blame while offering a half-assed apology,” Regina suggests. “If you’re sorry, that’s one thing. But you can’t say that you are and still claim to be in the right. It doesn’t work that way.”

 

“It does when you’re the one arguing,” Emma accuses, blood rising and the whiff of a real fight in her nostrils. This is part of what she’s been missing so desperately: with Regina, love is both a place of comfort and a battlefield. It’s never been a secret which one of those Emma is best suited for.

 

“I don’t appreciate being ambushed,” Regina huffs. “If this is because I called you during the week, it won’t happen again. Kathryn came over and we had too much wine--”

 

“You’re seeing Kathryn again?” Emma doesn’t mean for it to sound so ragingly jealous, but there’s nothing she can do about it once the words are out.

 

“I was never ‘seeing’ her. She’s my friend. Maybe the only one I have,” Regina reminds her. “Don’t do that. I don’t deserve your accusations.”

 

“No,” Emma sighs. “I don’t suppose you do. Regina, if there’s even the slightest chance that we can try again, that I can pack up in Portland and come home…”

 

“Did you really think it would be that easy? A quick chat over some coffee and it all goes away? We made it official, Emma. Can you imagine how the gossip mill would seize on us trying again so soon?”

 

“But you didn’t say no outright.”

 

“Didn’t I?”

 

“Regina--”

 

“Sometimes I think you don’t understand how deeply you hurt me. Other times, I see the guilt on your face and I know that you do. I don’t know what to do about that. Do you?”

 

“So let me try. I can’t come back in a day, anyway. That wasn’t my plan, before you start.”

 

“You want to woo me?” Regina is amused, at least. Her lips quirk up in time with her arched eyebrow. “How old-fashioned.”

 

“Will you have dinner with me, at least? If you hate it too much, we’ll just use the time to sort out college stuff for Henry. There’s money and paperwork to talk about, I’m sure.”

 

“Maybe,” Regina concedes. “I can’t believe you’re here so early on a Sunday.”

 

“I’m not actually awake yet,” Emma tells her. “I’m basically sleepwalking.”

 

“Comforting, since you were just driving our son around.”

 

“If I take said son to Granny’s, you want to come with?”

 

“Let’s not push it.”

 

“Right. I’ll go round up Henry,” Emma says. “And you know where we are if you change your mind.”

 

***

 

“That,” Emma groans as Regina approaches the table tucked into a corner of the restaurant, “is not even remotely fair.”

 

Regina, a vision in a fitted black cocktail dress that hits perfectly mid-thigh, smiles briefly in response. The waiter is a touch too solicitous in pulling out her chair, and Emma shoots the guy a warning look that almost melts his face off for his trouble. He swallows hard, before disappearing with a muttered comment about the wine list.

 

“You’re trying to impress me,” Regina remarks, looking around at the exposed brick and wood panelling of their surroundings. “When I looked this place up online, it had rave reviews.”

 

“Well, I don’t know the city that well yet. But I know enough to avoid the tourist traps right on the water. I thought I should make more effort than a lobster roll while sitting on a bench somewhere.”

 

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Regina says quietly, before picking up her menu. “Do you know what’s good here?”

 

“The guys at work said the mussels,” Emma supplies. “I’m going to see if I recognize any of the wines, when he brings the list, and probably pick my food to match.”

 

“You mean you won’t just order a sparkling white with your steak?” Regina is teasing, and enjoying it. “My, my, Emma Swan. How you’ve grown.”

 

It takes a moment for the use of her maiden name to register with them both, but the realization falls over them both like a sudden spring shower.

 

“Where’s that waiter?” Emma grumbles, because looking across the restaurant for the lanky ginger idiot means she doesn’t have to look at Regina. “I think we’re going to need that wine.”

 

***

 

“So,” Emma says a while later, when she can’t push the uneaten carrots around her plate any more. Regina sighs, spearing one baby carrot with her own fork and chewing it pointedly. “About my half-baked plan, from Sunday.”

 

“Would it be the worst thing to just have dinner every now and then?” Regina asks. “This whole getting out of Storybrooke is refreshing. Being civil is much more pleasant than all the silence.”

 

“It would be company for us both, with Henry off to college. I just can’t help thinking that with you… it’s never enough.”

 

“It was enough when you walked out on me,” Regina reminds her. “You certainly found your limit there.”

 

“Well, it wasn’t exactly civil for you to draw up divorce papers before I had a chance to really think about coming back,” Emma throws right back. The nearest diners are two tables over, but even the slight harshness of tone has caught their attention. Emma’s in no mood for rubberneckers tonight. She’ll arrest them if she has to, second glass of wine or not.

 

“Did you really expect me to just forget?” Regina has her wineglass in hand, swirling the dark red liquid thoughtfully. “With all you know, with all I confided in you over these past few years… what did you expect, Emma?”

 

“I should never have told them about what your mother did to you,” Emma forces her voice lower, fakes a calm she isn’t feeling. This time, stubborn pride and sheer pigheadedness can’t derail her apology. She knows that this time, she can’t screw it up. “I should never have told them all the things I did about your magic, about what it cost you.”

 

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

 

“I just figured that with Henry fooling around with magic, it might be relevant. And you know, the fairies linked us when we got married. I worried it might be because of that.”

 

“I’ve heard these excuses before. Funny how quickly you evolved from ‘bound by true love’ to ‘our union might be killing our son’.” Regina plucks the napkin from her lap, laying it beside her plate. “You could have asked me. You could have found out if it was relevant from me.”

 

“I… should have,” Emma admits. “But you didn’t give me a chance to explain. You stopped me seeing Henry and I couldn’t forgive you for it. Not right away.”

 

“I saved him,” Regina mutters. “That’s the only thing that should have mattered. But yet again, the bar for me to be considered the hero is quite a bit higher than everyone else’s, isn’t it? Your family only has to trip over a shoelace to be the conquering hero, but I never do seem to get the credit. I was a fool to think that would change because you claimed to love me. You’ll always belong to them.”

 

“I don’t,” Emma insists. “If I belong to anyone, it’s you.”

 

“I see you’ve been raiding greeting cards again,” Regina accuses. “But at the time you said we were never going to work. That we’d been lucky to last as long as we had. I can’t unhear those words, Emma.”

 

“And I can’t unsay them,” Emma admits. “All I can tell you is that it’s part of me. Expecting it to go wrong, to screw it up. To be left behind and not be part of the family anymore. That’s what I do.”

 

“That’s what you did,” Regina corrects, gripping her wineglass a little too tightly as she picks it up again. “And I accepted that, when you had no concept of family. I understood it, in the beginning.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Running away is to be expected, when there’s nothing to lose. But Henry and I, God, even your parents… we were something to lose. You had a reason to change the pattern, and you didn’t take it.”

 

“Well, what about you?”

 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

 

The waiter drifts back into view, but this time Regina is the one to send him scuttling off with a pointed look. Unless Emma’s imagining it, the people two tables over are leaning away again, trying not to get too close.

 

“I mean, you told me once that you don’t know how to let go of things. You were so heartbroken over Daniel that even years later you were still hurting enough to avenge him. I fucked up once, and you let me go without a fight.”

 

“It’s hardly the only time either of us have fucked up,” Regina counters, but the accusation has stung, judging by the color in her cheeks. “But if I let you go, it was only because that’s what I’m supposed to do. That doesn’t mean it was easy.”

 

“Supposed to?”

 

“For years, I’ve listened to patronizing pseudo-therapy about how wrong I am, about how toxic and unhealthy my love is for the people around me. I took it all on board, that I was broken, that I was the problem. It took a lot of work to change, and for what? For my wife to leave me right after she broke my heart?”

 

“You’ve never said it like that before. You never said I broke your heart.” Emma’s stomach sinks all over again. Just when she thinks she understands the damage she’s done, another door opens and in that room the ceiling has collapsed, too.

 

“Well,” Regina’s smile is tight, a sure sign that she’s fighting back tears. “I thought it was obvious.”

 

“Can we fix it?” Emma is pleading, and she’s ready to get down on her knees, if that’s what Regina asks.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

***

 

“This is the saddest place I’ve ever seen,” Regina announces, waiting for Emma’s reply.

 

“So? It has a roof. And four walls.”

 

“Barely.”

 

“S’fine,” Emma sighs, tired now and hoping that if she can drift off with Regina in her arms, she’ll stay this time.

 

“I should go,” Regina says, because she’s nothing if not a mind reader. “It really wasn’t fair for you to kiss me like that.”

 

“Hey, I gave you every opportunity--”

 

“About as unfair as my dress, I suppose.”

 

“Right. Exactly. Don’t go. It’s late, you’re tired.”

 

“Not too tired to drive,” Regina insists. “It’s too… I don’t know that we should have done this, Emma. I’m sorry.”

 

“Right,” Emma says, pulling the pillow over her face and yelling a silent scream into it. “Go figure,” she says a moment later, pulling the pillow off once more.

 

“We said we would give it time.”

 

“Right. And then you practically had my jeans off before we even made it back to the car.”

 

“You wore those jeans on purpose. You know I have a weakness,” Regina smiles as she says it, the most reassurance she can offer. Emma grabs it like a life preserver, a memory to replay over and over when they do the requisite few days without speaking.

 

“I think we can fix it,” Emma says, as Regina gathers her clothes from the floor. “You’ll consider it?”

 

“I’ll call you,” Regina promises. “I guess we’ll see.”

 

***

 

“I made a list,” Regina tells her three days later, without so much as a ‘hello’ in response to Emma’s own greeting.

 

“Of groceries?” Emma guesses.

 

“No. Pros and cons. Reasons to try again, and reasons not to.”

 

“Because our marriage is basically the town budget or something?”

 

“Our marriage no longer exists, we saw to that. But if we’re to be together, again… it should be more cautious this time.”

 

“If you say so,” Emma grouses, because nothing about the way Regina went down on her like a woman possessed the other night screamed caution. Emma can still feel the afterglow just daydreaming about it.

 

“Con,” Regina begins. “The embarrassment of telling everyone we made a mistake and are trying again. Relatedly, the mortification if we should fail again.”

 

“Irrelevant,” Emma argues. “It’s our business and nobody else’s.”

 

“Tell that to your parents,” Regina snaps. “Or Henry, for that matter. Do you think it’s fair to keep changing things on him?”

 

“He’s practically a grown-up.”

 

“Wash your mouth out. He’ll always be my little boy, and I’ll protect him accordingly.”

 

Emma makes herself comfortable on the sofa, kicking off her work boots and rolling her eyes. Always the mama bear, and it’s hard not to love that about Regina.

 

“So gimme a pro,” Emma demands. “Or you want one from me?”

 

“You go.”

 

“Fine. Pro: the sex is amazing. We owe it to the universe to keep doing that.”

 

“Spoken like a true frat boy,” Regina groans.

 

“Don’t go throwing that around, you realize Henry will probably pledge a frat in the fall, right?” Emma can barely suppress her wicked glee.

 

“Don’t even joke,” Regina barks. “He’s far too sensitive for anything like that.”

 

“We’ll see.”

 

“Emma--”

 

“So you give me a pro. Focus on the positive, Mayor Mills.”

 

“Well, since you say that… I miss my married name. It’s the first time I used something not directly connected to either of my parents.”

 

“Me too. I mean, you know where Swan comes from. But it’s the name that says I survived in this world, no matter how crappy the circumstances.”

 

“How romantic,” Regina teases. “I forget that about you, sometimes.”

 

“Con,” Emma says after a moment. “We’re too good at fighting. We can really tear strips off each other.”

 

“I’m surprised we’re not fighting now,” Regina admits. “But I always thought we were pretty good at making up. We had that going for us.”

 

“I want to try again,” Emma pleads, because it doesn’t seem helpful to make lists and wait days and have casual dinners.

 

“Time,” is all Regina chokes out in response at first. “We need more time.”

 

***

 

“By my count,” Emma gasps, leaning against the bathroom stall in the insanely good sushi restaurant they’ve only had the appetizers at so far. “That’s eleven dates. That’s more dating than we did before we got married.”

 

“Well, that relationship was founded mostly in secretive sexual encounters,” Regina points out, pulling her panties up from where they’ve fallen around her ankles. “We only started going out in public once people found out about us.”

 

Emma clears her throat, pointedly.

 

“Yes, well…” Regina trails off.

 

There’s no other argument to make, Emma realizes, and so she kisses Regina again, smudging what’s left of her lipstick and not caring in the slightest. Regina kisses back with typical ferocity, and Emma feels her heartbeat quicken once more.

 

“It’s time,” Emma whispers, their lips practically still touching. “Don’t make me be without you anymore, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Regina agrees, and she lifts her chin with the resolve that Emma’s always been fascinated by. “We have to make it work this time. We have to love each other enough to stay.”

 

“I love you,” Emma tells her, and she’s never meant it more than in this moment, in a ladies room in Portland.

 

“I love you, too,” Regina replies, and though they’re not wearing rings anymore, Emma swears she can feel the presence of hers when Regina takes her left hand and kisses it to seal their agreement.

 

***

 

“I told you so,” Henry sighs, sitting on the trunk of the car and doing exactly nothing to help. “Did you have to work your two weeks’ notice?”

 

“Of course I did,” Emma snaps, wrestling the last bag into the backseat of the Bug. “It’s called being a responsible adult, Henry.”

 

“Mom made you, didn’t she?”

 

“It’s part of the test,” Emma admits. “If we were still sure after not seeing each other or speaking for two weeks, then I get to move back.”

 

“Well, keep the noise down,” Henry grumbles. “I don’t need more reasons for therapy in my last few months at home.”

 

“Can we not talk about that, you know, ever?” Emma asks, squeezing her eyes shut in embarrassment. “I swear, you get your ability to embarrass me from your mom.”

 

“Duh.”

 

“Any more sass and you can walk home.”

 

“I’ll call Mom and she’ll come get me. And get mad at you for abandoning me.”

 

“Are you sure there isn’t a summer school we can enrol you in?”

 

“You wish,” Henry retorts. “Are you finally done?”

 

“Yeah, we’ll drop off the keys on the way home,” Emma says, opening the passenger door. “Damn.”

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing. It just feels good to say that. Home.”

 

“You’re quite the dork, Ma,” Henry snickers, before turning up the stereo and blasting whichever thrashing guitar band he’s into this week.

 

“Yeah,” Emma replies, even if he isn’t listening. “When it comes to your mom, I guess I am.”

 

***

 

“Hey.”

 

“Hey,” Regina replies, greeting Henry with a hug first. “You made it in one piece.”

 

“I did. I can unpack now, or…”

 

“Whatever you like.”

 

“God, moms,” Henry groans. “You used to be married. Could you maybe cram it on the formalities?”

 

“What did I tell you about mouthing off, kid?” Emma says, but she can’t help smiling at him all the same. “Even if you do have a point. Hey, Regina?”

 

“Yes?”

 

Emma steps up close, slipping one hand behind Regina’s neck and placing the other in the small of her back. Their eyes meet for a minute, and just as Henry blurts out an “oh no! gross!” Emma dips Regina as dramatically as her arms will allow, and plants one hell of a kiss on her.

 

“I hate you!” Henry calls back as he thunders up the stairs. Emma is too busy kissing her wife to care, and they’ll take care of that ex- thing at some point, soon, she promises herself.

 

“Well,” Regina says, when Emma tips her right way up again. “That’s more like it.”

 

“Oh please, you were the one busting out the small talk,” Emma says, smacking Regina lightly on the ass for good measure. “Did you clear some closet space for me? I think we should go check before I unload the car.”

 

“Of course I--”

 

“I’m saying, let’s go check the bedroom. To make room for my stuff.”

 

“We’re traumatizing our child, you do realize that?”

 

“I think he’ll get over it. Now, one last time… you sure about this?”

 

“As sure as I can be,” Regina replies. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Emma. There’s going to be a whole new adjustment. And I might not trust you right away.”

 

“I can live with that,” Emma tells her. “As long as it means being here. Anything else is way, way worse. We know that now.”

 

“Your parents found out you’re moving back in,” Regina tells her, leading the way upstairs. “Don’t think my patience extends to having them here.”

 

“I’ll go visit later. Later,” Emma insists. “But right now, I have more pressing concerns.”

 

“Oh for God’s sake,” Henry sighs as he runs downstairs past them, backpack in hand. “I’m going to see Gram and Gramps.”

 

“Well,” Emma says once the front door has slammed behind Henry and they’re standing outside Regina’s--outside _their_ \--bedroom. “Turns out we don’t need to keep quiet this time. You ready?”

 

Regina grab’s Emma’s shirt and pulls her towards the bed by way of response.

 

“Don’t let me regret this,” Regina whispers, somewhere in the middle of unbuttoning that same shirt with quick fingers. The look in her eyes is vulnerable, and Emma sees the challenge there, too.

 

“I won’t,” Emma murmurs, taking Regina’s hands and kissing each fingertip in turn. When she lets go, Regina places one palm gently over Emma’s heart. “I promise.”

 

 


End file.
